slip the jesses
by sweetwatersong
Summary: I promise you nothing, I take only that which is free / I'd give you a life full of risk, and the whirlwind of joy that can be / Don't try to bind me, just love me without any greed / And I'll give you the world, and my heart, and the air that I breathe. (They call him the Hawk for a reason.) [Clint/Natasha]


**slip the jesses  
**rating: PG  
characters: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff  
warnings: mentions of violence  
summary:_ I promise you nothing, I take only that which is free / I'd give you a life full of risk, and the whirlwind of joy that can be / Don't try to bind me, just love me without any greed / And I'll give you the world, and my heart, and the air that I breathe. _They call him the Hawk for a reason.

author's note: Title and summary from _Hunter_ by Heather Dale, the inspiration behind this story.

slip the jesses

_"Do you believe in fate?" The fortuneteller asks him, her hands spreading wide over the line of cards._

They call him the Hawk because he always has a clear line of sight, because he can lie in the sun and sand and heat for days waiting for the one moment, the perfect shot, because he rarely misses.

They slap him on the back or regard him with nervous admiration and he smiles and jokes along with the best of them.

The nightmares still come at night.

What most people don't understand is that his easy camaraderie doesn't mean he's being honest. The SHIELD agents take his easy-going attitude and willingness to sit through just about anything as a sign that he's revealing himself, that he is everything he seems to be. They don't understand that you can laugh and relax and never release your choke-hold on the monster inside, the deep and roaring thing that craves blood and the hunt and the finality of death.

They adopt the codename Hawkeye and think they're friends with him.

He doesn't tell them otherwise.

She is walking along the city street singing softly to herself, for all the world only a pleasant woman with hair redder than the blood he leaves on his arrows. He can't catch the tune, lying hundreds of meters away and hundreds of meters up, but there's a smile on her lips and a poisoned ring on her finger and a lightness in her step he recognizes.

Her gaze travels up, running along the bright shop signs and blunt building edges, traveling up towards him, when the rumble of an airplane passing overhead shakes his bones.

For a moment, as her focus catches on the cloud trail and following it, the mask she wears falls away. What is left is someone he could almost recognize as the Widow, the killer... but the op files didn't have a photo of this weary wistfulness.

Then the plane passes, the moment passes, and she looks down and gathers herself together. She begins moving again, shifting back into the flowing crowd, and he never figures out what it was that she was humming before the lost look came into her eyes.

He has a clear line of sight, a clear path to follow and a clear directive to obey, but when the black van smashes into her car, he doesn't take the shot.

The thugs sliding out of the doors all fall with neat bullet holes in their chests, collapsing on the asphalt as he covers the last few yards to her door. She's fighting with the airbag, already trying to pull herself out of the crushed driver's seat, her legs trapped by the twisted steering wheel. He reaches the car and reaches out, the shards of glass crunching under his boots. She looks at him, startled, hand going for a gun that's not there.

"Come on," he tells her. "I can get you out."

She stares at his hand, at the arm guard wrapped around it, at the emblem on his jacket. Then her gaze moves up to look into his, and beneath all the calculations and ways she's thinking of to kill him, he sees her comprehension.

Using his grip as leverage, she manages to crawl out of the car just before the emergency services arrive. They vanish into the crowd before anyone can stop them, running through the shadows of the city.

He watches her grow, adopting the spread eagle symbol and another oath of loyalty, of conditions, and all the while she seduces SHIELD, seduces him, the beast inside roars and strains to seize her. It fights all the harder when he realizes she doesn't need him anymore.

That she never needed him in the first place.

"You don't get it, do you?" She asks, propping herself up on an elbow so she can look down at him. "I didn't want to escape on a plane that day; I wanted wings of my own. Some way to leave that place. And then you arrived, with that eagle on your chest and a hand offering me a way out, offering me something I couldn't make myself."

Her hair trails over his chest, half falling over her face, and she brushes it behind an ear almost casually.

"Why," she asks, "would I let you go, just when I ve got you where I want you?"

And in her eyes he sees humor and kills and the deep black of space, of walking forward and never looking back, and a woman who has beasts of her own.

When he lets the monster slip its chains and come roaring into full force, she looks into its gaze and smiles.

_"Do you believe in fate?" The fortuneteller asks, spreading her hands over the cards before her. He doesn't reply, but something in his expression must give him away because behind the half-veil her sharp eyes change. "No? Well, maybe that's all for the better." She looks down at her cards and selects one no different from the rest of its fellows, turning it over and placing it face up on the table for him._

_The hawk stares back at him, wings spread, talons open._

_"The question you should ask," the lady tells him, her voice both amused and all too knowing, "is whether it's coming in to kill or to land."_

Clint doesn't think of her until years later, bodies later, kill counts later. Natasha looks up at his laugh, one eyebrow already rising.

"Do you believe in fate?" He asks her, the off-handed tone of his question betrayed by the irony. She doesn't immediately reply, considering the question; considering him.

"I believe in this," she says, and although she could mean a hundred things (her Glock, herself, him, even SHIELD) he knows what she means.

"Yeah," he tells her, looking down as he finishes cleaning his arrows. "Me too."

_fin_


End file.
